


make my heart stop and listen

by preciousthings



Series: the days we were golden [2]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fraternity, College, M/M, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-05-18
Packaged: 2019-05-08 03:46:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14685789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/preciousthings/pseuds/preciousthings
Summary: And like—fifteen minutes in Auston’s office in the Student Activities suite isn’t three days in a beach house on the Amalfi Coast, but it’s something, and it’s what they’ve got, for now.





	make my heart stop and listen

**Author's Note:**

> if you or anyone you know is mentioned by name, please click out now and get yourself a drink to forget this ever happened!
> 
> thank you to ali and julia for reading this in various states of finished, and lotts for the beta once it was does!! you're my faves <3  
> title from "yeah boy" by kelsea ballerini. 
> 
> this takes place in the same universe as my fic 'somebody turn the lights on,' and lotts' fic 'the world will follow after (come on, come on).' that being said, this fits in about a month after luke and matt get together, and about three months before mikey and nate do! none of them are mentioned in this fic, but that's just a little bit of the timeline!!

Mitch spent an entire semester roaming Europe with his then still-fairly-new secret boyfriend, going to classes occasionally, and still, there’s no place like the frat house, with a literal hole in the fourth step down to the basement, a window on the second floor that is locked open, and his best friends in the entire world.

Being back is awesome. It’s so great, but it does mean less time with Auston, and when they’re literally scheduling time to see each other in the mostly-deserted top floor of the A&S building, Mitch finds himself missing the way they ran around Europe because no one knew them there, the way Auston kissed him at the top (well, the middle-top—Mitch drew a line at that, he wasn’t going any higher) of the Eiffel Tower, the time they got day drunk on too much sangria in Spain.

And like—fifteen minutes in Auston’s office in the Student Activities suite isn’t three days in a beach house on the Amalfi Coast, but it’s something, and it’s what they’ve got, for now.

Mitch brought him coffee and lunch, because he knows Auston has a bunch of stuff going on right now, and he’s basically living in his office and the studios in the music building at this point. Mitch knocks, but it’s less of him asking to be let in and more of a courtesy, because Auston knows he’s coming.

“You’re a lifesaver,” Auston says, not looking up from where he’s typing intensely.

“No, I’m just your boyfriend,” Mitch says, putting the coffee and to-go box down on the desk and leaning across it to kiss Auston’s cheek.

“My boyfriend, who’s a lifesaver,” Auston says. He looks up and catches Mitch’s lips in a kiss before Mitch pulls back fully. “Hi.”

“How’s your day been?”

“Long. I had studio time booked at 7:30 this morning,” Auston sighs. He strikes a few more keys before turning the screen away from him. “I’m taking a break.”

“I have class in 20, but I’m happy to distract until then,” Mitch smiles.

“We’re not having sex in my office,” Auston says.

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Mitch wiggles his eyebrows.

“We’re not having sex in my office at noon on a Thursday when the entire Greek Life staff is in their offices down the hall. Eat your lunch.”

“Fine, bossy,” Mitch pouts and starts to unzip his backpack, but it only lasts a second, because Auston accidentally spills some of his coffee because of a straw malfunction, and Mitch laughs so hard he thinks he might stop breathing.

“Ha, ha,” Auston says, dry, but he’s smiling, too. Mitch could write poems about Auston’s smile. Mitch _has_ written poems about Auston’s smile, in one of his english ed classes. “I’m a mess.”

“But you’re, like, a cute mess.”

“You’re _biased_ ,” Auston says. “You have to say that.”

“You are, objectively, the cutest mess I’ve ever seen,” Mitch says. “I’m saying that as someone with very good taste. Not as your boyfriend. But as your boyfriend, I don’t have to say you’re a cute mess. I could just call you a mess and leave it.”

“I think I prefer cute mess.”

Mitch winks, and finishes unzipping his backpack to get to his lunch. Someone knocks on the door and Mitch doesn’t even bother sitting up straight or turning around.

“Hey, Aus, am I interrupting a meeting or something?” the person at the door says, and when Mitch eventually does turn around, he sees Maddie. “Oh, hey, Mitch.” She waves and Mitch waves back.

“Nah,” Auston says. “We’re just having lunch.”

“Okay, well, I like the flyer you made for the Greek Retreat, but there are two really small things that need to be changed on it. I emailed you with the info,” Maddie says. “Don’t even bother sending it back to me, just send it straight to Colleen for approval when you’re done. CC me on that email, though?”

Auston nods. “Noted. I’ll fix that as soon as Mitch leaves.”

“Perfect,” Maddie says. “Thank you so much!”

“No problem. This is literally my job, it’s cool.”

“Well, uh,” Maddie says. “Have fun? I’ll see you in class tomorrow, Mitch.” She leaves Auston’s office, and closes the door.

“Of course you know Maddie,” Auston says. “You literally know everyone. _How_.”

“I’m charming as hell,” Mitch says, smiling. “And _you_ fell for my charm.”

“I guess, but now I’m, like, stuck,” Auston says, smirking.

“ _Stuck_?!” Mitch fakes outrage.

“Nah, I just kinda love you.”

“Gross,” Mitch says, before taking a bite of his sandwich. They lapse into silence, both eating lunch and scrolling through their phones, when Mitch remembers why he even showed up in the first place, aside from the lunch.

“Hey, so,” he starts. “Dylan has night class and finance committee tonight, so I’ve got the room for, like, a solid three hours. Come over?”

“Risky,” Auston says. “I like it.”

“I miss spending time with you, so,” Mitch shrugs. “Like, I’m past the point of caring what my brothers think? I mean, I guess on some level I care about what they think, but you may or may not have broken Dylan’s ankle freshman year, and this rivalry crap is dumb at this point.”

“That’s the spirit,” Auston laughs. “I can grab takeout on my way over, if you want.”

“Sounds like we’ve got ourselves a date,” Mitch says. “And I have class, so I’ll text you.” Mitch stands up and pulls his backpack on, leaning across the desk to kiss Auston. “Love you.”

“See you later,” Auston says, and Mitch leaves, later than he had intended, but he isn’t even bothered that he has to run across the quad to get to Teaching Science on time.

His phone buzzes in his pocket when he’s halfway there, but he only checks once he’s sitting down in class, waiting for his laptop to turn on.

 

Inbox:

 **aus** ❤ **|| 12:19 pm**

love you too :)

 

He smiles for the rest of the lecture.

  


The rest of the day goes by quickly, and Mitch is almost vibrating by the time Auston texts him that he’ll only be a few more minutes, and he’s not sure if it’s because he’ll finally have more than twenty minutes with Auston, in a place with a bed for once, or if it’s because he’s had way more coffee than he should have today. Either way, the house is blessedly deserted, at least downstairs, so Mitch has no problem sneaking Auston in.

Not that he cares, because he’s a little tired of hiding how happy he is.

As soon as Mitch closes the door to his room, he presses Auston against it and kisses him. It’s a lot more frantic than the way they kissed earlier in Auston’s office, both of them just wanting to get their hands on each other, and Mitch is just—so happy.

It’s—intense, and that’s more than okay with Mitch, but he pulls back, and Auston honest-to-god pouts.

“You brought food,” Mitch says. “C’mon. Dinner, and then we can do some more of that.”

“Promise?” Auston asks, and instead of answering, Mitch just kisses his cheek and takes his hand, pulling him back toward the bed.

As they eat, trying not to get food on the comforter, Auston pulls his hoodie off and Mitch snatches it off the floor and pulls it on. It’s a little big, but it’s Auston’s, so Mitch doesn’t really mind too much. They’re quiet while they’re eating, but it feels comfortable, like—

Like Mitch could do this every night, and never get tired of it.

Mitch looks at Auston, and catches him looking back, and there’s this quiet happiness humming beneath the surface, so Mitch pushes both of their mostly-empty containers to the floor and pushes Auston down to kiss him hard.

It escalates quickly, Mitch grinding against Auston as Auston kisses down Mitch’s neck.

Mitch doesn’t even hear the door open until it closes again, and he freezes. He doesn’t even have to roll over to know that it’s Dylan.

“Fuck,” he mutters, breathing heavily on top of Auston.

“Mitch?” Dylan asks. “Is—I interrupted something, didn’t I…”

Mitch still hasn’t moved, but he figures he probably should. He rolls off of Auston, and, because it’s only a twin bed, right onto the floor. Mitch hears Auston snickering. He’s just glad that he fell this way, and not onto the other side where he would have landed in sesame chicken. Auston must sit up, because while Mitch is pulling himself off of the ground, Dylan speaks again.

“ _Matthews?_ ” Dylan says, and, like, Mitch can’t tell what his voice is doing—if it’s anger, or concern, or confusion. It’s something, though.

“My name is actually Auston, thanks,” Auston says, and _holy shit_ , Mitch is so in love with him. He has to bite his tongue not to say that out loud.

“I thought you had class and, like, finance committee,” Mitch says completely causally, as if Dylan hadn’t just walked in on what very well could have been sex if he were just, like, five minutes later.

“Class got out early and Lawson pushed finance back to tomorrow cause, like, he has a project due tomorrow, and he and Trav broke up, or something? I texted you, but you obviously didn’t see it.”

“Yeah, I was a little busy,” Mitch says.

“Do you guys want to, like—I can go, if you’re not, like, done,” Dylan says, and Mitch looks at Auston for an answer.

“I’m actually just gonna head home,” Auston says, and Mitch can’t help but feel disappointed, just a little bit. “I’ll talk to you later.” He gets up and kisses Mitch before heading toward the door.

“Love you,” Mitch smiles. He sees the curious expression Dylan has on his face, and knows that as soon as the door shuts again, he’s in for a game of twenty questions he’d rather not participate in.

He doesn’t really regret any of it, is the thing. He’s not going to lie anymore. It’s kind of impossible at this point, with Dylan having seen what he did. And now it just means more nights like tonight, and more days like today, with less bothering about who knows what and who cares that a Delta is dating a Kappa. Mitch is dating Auston. Their letters don’t matter. They’re happy.

“So is that like, a thing?” Dylan asks, after an excruciating thirty seconds of silence. Mitch was expecting more than just that.

“You could say that, yeah,” Mitch says. He immediately hates the way it sounds coming from his mouth, like what they have is a lot less serious than it is. Like it’s just a fling, or Auston might hit it and quit it, and it’s, like, none of that. It’s so far from that.

Mitch sits back down on his bed, cross-legged, and only then realizes that he’s still wearing Auston’s hoodie.

“How long?”

“Officially, a year in late October,” Mitch says. “Unofficially, we were on and off since the second semester of freshman year.”

“Holy shit, Mitch, that’s a lot more than just a _thing_. That’s, like, commitment.”

“Yeah, it’s this thing called a relationship.”

“Funny,” Dylan says. He sits down on his own bed and faces Mitch. “So, Matthews is your boyfriend.”

“ _Auston_ is my boyfriend, yes.” Mitch rolls his eyes, because he really thought they were past the ‘basic understanding’ part of this.

“Does anyone know?”

Mitch shakes his head. “Just Kappa’s president, I think.”

“You’re in a _year long_ relationship, and no one knew?” Dylan asks.

“I don’t think either of us intended on it getting this far,” Mitch says. “The secrecy. Not the relationship, we were both very much in on the relationship. It was easy at first, and then I went to Italy, and we got comfortable with it, and by the time I got back, I dunno, we just—we found something that was working, and kept doing it, even if it meant only seeing each other during office hours, and when one of our roommates were out.”

“When you were in Italy, he was—”

“In Switzerland,” Mitch cuts Dylan off. “We went to a different country every weekend.”

Mitch, because he can now, takes his phone off the nightstand and scrolls through the Europe album of his camera roll to show Dylan a picture that he took of Auston in Paris, when they bought a lock to put on the lock bridge and he was kneeling down to actually attach it to the bridge. “I have so many pictures that I never got to show anyone,” he adds.

“I can’t believe you guys put a lock on the bridge,” Dylan teases.

Mitch shrugs. “It just felt like something we should do.”

Dylan makes a hand motion for Mitch to toss him his phone, so Mitch does, and just sits there while Dylan scrolls through his pictures. He can see Dylan smiling, and doing his best to hide that with the phone in front of his face.

“You look so happy,” Dylan says, turning the phone around. It’s a picture that Auston took sitting across the table from Mitch at a cafe in Edinburgh, and Mitch is smiling, trying to swat the phone out of Auston’s hand so he would stop taking pictures. Mitch remembers that so vividly.

“I was really happy,” Mitch says.

“Why were you keeping that a secret, then?” Dylan asks, still looking through the pictures.

“It’s not, like, _just_ a rivalry thing, but Delta and Kappa have that rivalry that goes back decades, and also, it was just so new at the beginning, it was just something we were trying out, and we really wanted to just try it out without anyone in our business.”

Mitch is quiet for a second, considering if he should add on, and ultimately decides to. “And the first time we hooked up was at the Greek Week party the day after he allegedly broke your ankle.”

“Why are you saying allegedly? You literally watched him break my ankle, Mitch, it’s not like you can just hop sides now that he’s your boyfriend, like, does bros mean _nothing_ to you?” Dylan asks, and Mitch knows he’s joking, which feels—really good, if he’s being honest, because Mitch was expecting a very different reaction as a whole, so to be able to make jokes about it with Dylan is good.

“It was almost two years ago, Dyl, let it _go_.”

“I’m willing to call a truce if he is,” Dylan says.

“I’m sure that can be arranged,” Mitch says. Dylan hands him his phone back and Mitch sends a text to Auston.

 

Sent Messages:

**mitch || 9:54 pm**

dylan is willing to call a truce about the greek week ankle breaking incident if u are

please say u are he hasn’t let go of this and it’s been so long

 

“I feel bad,” Dylan says, and Mitch shoots him a questioning look. “Like, you’ve been with someone for over a year, and I was never able to pick up on how happy you are since you started dating him? Or, like, I couldn’t even be happy for you as your best friend, because I’m part of the reason you didn’t tell people?”

“Don’t,” Mitch says, assuring. “Really. We chose that, and now we’re choosing to tell some people, or like, everyone, so just—be happy for us now? I love him, and I am really fucking happy, and that probably isn’t going to change any time soon.”

“I’m glad he makes you happy. Being in a relationship is a really good look on you, now that I can see it,”

“Maybe if you find yourself a boyfriend, we can go on double dates and shit,” Mitch says.

Dylan blushes a dark red, like maybe Mitch has hit a nerve or something there. “I’m working on it,” he says. “Or like, working through my own feelings first.”

“Davo?” Mitch asks, mostly because it’s been obvious to him all semester that there’s something there that really wasn’t before Mitch left for Italy. He wouldn’t have said anything if he thought there was a chance he would be wrong, and judging by the slightly-horrified-and-mostly-embarrassed look on Dylan’s face, he’s very much right about it. “I’m proud of you, bud.”

“Can we talk about this some other time?” Dylan mumbles.

“Fine,” Mitch says. “But I won’t forget about it.”

“Hey,” Dylan says, changing the subject quickly. “I’ll sleep on Connor’s couch tonight if you want Auston to come back.”

It’s Mitch’s instinct to tell Dylan he’s being ridiculous to sleep on a couch, but he’s offering, so Mitch can sleep in the same bed as his boyfriend. It means a lot to him, and he’s being a little bit selfish when he just nods an affirmative and sends a text to Auston telling him to come back and stay the night.

“Thank you,” Mitch says, standing up. Dylan does, too, and Mitch gives him a hug.

  


Not even two hours later, Mitch is lying on his side next to Auston in bed. It’s a tight fit, but Mitch is more than willing to make it work, and, like, the closeness is more than okay with him. He isn’t particularly tired, but he and Auston are kissing and Auston is tracing his finger over Mitch’s bicep. Mitch kisses Auston’s nose, and Mitch feels Auston’s laughter in the way his chest moves more than hears it.

“We haven’t done this since Budapest,” Mitch says.

“Shared a bed for a whole night?” Auston asks, and Mitch nods. “We should really do more of it. It’s like, next-level boyfriend stuff.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Mitch teases. “But I guess we are kinda next-level now, huh?”

“Taking our relationship public, or like, telling all of our brothers, and holding hands on campus, among other things,” Auston says. “If that’s—that is what you want, right?”

Mitch nods. “And you want that too, right?”

“I think we’re on the same page,” Auston says.

“Now I have more opportunities to be gross about loving you, and literally everyone’s gonna know it,” MItch says. “I can’t _wait_.”

“I love you,” Auston says, pecking Mitch on the lips. Mitch smiles, returns the sentiment, and kisses Auston back. Auston settles in a little closer, rests his head on Mitch’s chest, and Mitch figures he’s probably going to fall asleep just like that.

He’s not upset about it. Not even a little bit.

**Author's Note:**

> fun stuff:  
> \- it's purposefully vague in the story for lack of wanting to explain it in-universe, but auston's the public relations intern with the greek life sector of the office of student activities  
> \- his coworker maddie is actually maddie rooney  
> \- yes i did that  
> \- mitch is an education major and auston is a sound recording major  
> \- this single day fits into a much larger narrative for both mitch and auston, but also for connor and dylan (this is my boring way of saying This Is A Teaser For What's To Come) 
> 
> i'm marns16 on tumblr and matbarzaI (the l is a capital i!) on twitter <3


End file.
